Oregon’s Poet Laureate to give Linfield reading

Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen will discuss the role of poet laureate and read selected poems Tuesday, Nov. 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the Austin Reading Room in the Jereld R. Nicholson Library at Linfield College.

Petersen, who has presented readings in places that range from Oregon to India, will showcase poems from her various published works, including her most recently published collection, The Voluptuary. Petersen has lived her entire life in Oregon as a housewife, mother and eventually public high school teacher. She taught English at Mazama High School in Klamath Falls for eight years, publishing a number of poems in literary journals, with her first poem being published in The Oregonian. Petersen won a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and spent a year at Stanford studying with poets including Adrienne Rich and Grace Paley and has since been published in numerous magazines and her own publications. Her poetry can also be seen on Trimet buses in Portland as a part of Poetry in Motion.

Petersen was named Oregon’s sixth Poet Laureate April 26, 2010 by Governor Ted Kulongoski. The Poet Laureate program is a collaborative project of the state’s five cultural partners: Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Heritage Commission, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Humanities and the State Historic Preservation Office, and is funded by the Oregon Cultural Trust.

This event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Nicholson Library, the Linfield English Department and the McMinnville Public Library. For more information, contact Susan Barnes Whyte, 503-883-2517, swhyte@linfield.edu.